Wednesday, 8 May 2013

‘The Government is understandably hesitant about marking “Europe Day” on 9th
May with any great fanfare.
Two of the central assertions of the “Europeanism” that the day is supposed to honour
– the EU as a “peace project” and that small states by “pooling” sovereignty increase
their influence over larger ones and in the world – stand exposed as ideological cover
for political and economic interests that have been the engine of EU integration.
There has always been a neo-imperial dimension to the EU integration project.
The establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 was to
facilitate German rearmament at the start of the cold war. In December the EU will
discuss further militarisation. German chancellor Merkel and other EU leaders have
compunction in presenting plans for a “European army” within wider EU integration.
In addition the EU which purported to unite Europe is now dividing its peoples and
nations from one another in an unprecedented way.
The doctrine about “pooling” sovereignty is equally dubious. For EU members, most
laws come from Brussels and the reality is that sovereignty “pooled” is in fact
sovereignty surrendered.’
People’s Movement patron Robert Ballagh says:
‘As people face into years of misery and impoverishment to make the euro-currency
work and keep the EU “project” on the road, EU President José Manuel Barroso has
announced that the unelected EU Commission will set out a range of EU Treaty
changes by early next year that will be of such a far reaching nature as to seem like
“political science fiction” and that these changes “will be reality in a few years time,
sooner than we might think”.
The vision of the unelected Eurocrats is that the peoples of the euro-zone countries
must completely abandon their national independence and democracy, reversing
centuries of democratic and social gains in order to try to save the euro.

The prospect ahead is one of stagnation as the euro zone prevents peripheral member
states like Ireland from dealing with the immense burden of debt which now rests on
their governments, private citizens and business firms, imposing instead a continuous
assault on living standards and a pro-cyclical austerity regime that is geared to
ensuring that creditor banks, investors and governments are compensated to the
maximum for their improvident lending during the bubble years.
“Europe Day” is part of an elite rather than a democratic project and should be
marked as such.’